Many hand-held electronic devices, such as cellular phones, include displays that can operate using both ambient lighting or backlight illumination for image formation. Such displays are said to operate in both a transmissive mode and a reflective mode and are commonly referred to as transflective displays. These displays use ambient light when it is available and a backlight only where necessary or selected by the user. The reduced reliance on the backlight decreases power consumption, allowing longer battery life.
Such transflective displays include a transflector layer that may be a partial or patterned metal mirror, or a clear polymer loaded with appropriate reflective particles. This transflector layer is designed to both reflect ambient light for use in creating a display in the reflective mode and to transmit light from a backlight for creating a display in the transmissive mode. The transflector layer provides an intensity balance between the two operational modes. If the transmissive qualities of the transflector are increased to improve lighting during backlit or transmissive operation, then less ambient light will be reflected by the transflector layer, thereby decreasing display brightness during the reflective or ambient mode operation. Conversely, improving the transflector reflectivity will increase ambient brightness, but sacrifice brightness during backlit operation.